Male suicide prevention: a personal take

By Frantisek Malina, founder Blocl.uk

The ratio of male vs female suicide was 17.2 to 5.4, consistent over the past 10 years*. This is relevant both to my maternal grandfather and my mother. My grandfather, a university professor and a recognised inventor, had a broken heart loosing his 2nd wife while my mother, an artist, carried out her self-euthanasia quite recently, and with her extremely poor health having spoken to a doctor we found out she did this with dignity and even professionalism. These things are normal and they happen. What isn't normal is the ratio. There aren't 3 times as many men in the UK*, they are under three times the pressure. This is one area where women also need to take the lead and catch up, take that pressure off, equality won't be achieved without this. What can we do to increase support for men? Big white heterosexual men as all men need as much help and support as any other group, not just pressure because they are perceived to be strong. They aren't stronger than this negative discrimination.

What practical steps can we take personally and as a group to deal with issues such as home loss following divorce, no access to children and grand children related to this, false allegations and unreported violence against them, as well as reported violence that does not get actioned?

These are typically male issues but they affected my ill mother too having cascaded down to her as a fallout of my own divorce.

When I got arrested on Stansted Airport by Merseyside Police for false allegations by my ex wife right on the day of funeral of my own mother, there was no apology from them after a release, not even ticket back to Stansted to get my car and reunite me with my newborn girl born on the day of her grandmother’s death. The only support I got was from working scouse men in the Liverpool pub who bought me a beer after I walked in and called them “British C*nts”. Maybe this is the answer, we need killing the beer tax and pubs back on for men to gather and discuss their issues in groups or we need to normalise coming to pub without drinking, men only gyms as attractive and well equipped as ladies only gyms. Men only cafes. Domestic violence helplines and organisations for men funded just as much as those for women, we need a leadership movement and voices as strong as those of feminists from the male camp, we need a masculinist movement with a ratio of male vs female suicide as a success indicator. Virus is being defeated, now let’s stop men from killing themselves. Let’s figure out a path forward and let’s go

* from the Office for National statistics